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Wi-Fi Patent Victory Earns CSIRO $200 Million
bennyboy64 writes "iTnews reports the patent battle between Australia's CSIRO and 14 of the world's largest technology companies has gained the research organization $200 million from out of court settlements. CSIRO executive director of commercial, Nigel Poole, said the CSIRO were wanting to license their technology further, stating that he 'urged' companies using it to come forward and seek a license. 'We believe that there are many more companies that are using CSIRO's technology and it's our desire to license the technology further,' Poole said.'We would urge companies that are currently selling devices that have 802.11 a,g or n to contact CSIRO and to seek a license because we believe they are using our technology.'"
Pat on the back for CSIRO. One of the ways government-owned research organizations can expect to survive is by monetizing inventions - when companies like Lucent, Buffalo, Linksys, Apple etc. all make a killing off this stuff and didn't invest in its development it is only fair they are forced to pay up.
It was also the first time the research organization had seen a surplus in its financial reporting http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26209952-12377,00.html
Idiocy. CSIRO is nothing like a patent troll. CSIRO developed the technology...
Can someone please justify why we should consider the CSIRO to be a patent troll? They are an actual research organisation (a taxpayer-funded one at that); they don't exist just to file patents and make claims on them. Why are people dismissing them as trolls?
Yup. Isn't this *EXACTLY* why patents *REALLY* should exist? Hi - we've developed and tested a new technology, here it is, and here is how to use it. Please pay us money for the privilige.
Good on them, and hopefully we'll see some more great work from them in the future.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Except that they aren't patent trolls - they are the Australian Government's science organisation - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), they have been in this battle for quite a while.
Read up on the WLAN stuff here http://www.csiro.gov.au/science/wireless-LANs.html
Then get back to us when you think that inventing wireless networking technology is easy and doesn't warrant the possibility of being patented.
Isn't this an indication that the system is severely flawed when someone pops up very late to the table and claims that they own it?
[...] Softwares and methods are too easy to re-invent all over again, and who can tell if a certain solution has been available before and then silently put to the grave for one reason or another?
Speaking of trolls, you are one yourself. Before you mod me into oblivion, hear me out.
In your post, you seem to claim that (1) CSIRO is a patent troll; and that (2) the patent is a software patent, thus is unethical. Both claims are patently false. (ha ha)
For starters, to address claim (1), CSIRO is not a patent troll. What is a patent troll? A patent troll is an organisation that exists only to accumulate patents (and make a profit off royalties). CSIRO is not a patent troll! They are an Australian Government-funded organisation that does real research. They actually researched and patented the technology back in the early '90s. (Source)
To address claim (2), the patent in question is not a software patent! Thus the entire basis for your argument...
Softwares and methods are too easy to re-invent all over again, and who can tell if a certain solution has been available before and then silently put to the grave for one reason or another?
...is completely baseless. The patent in question covers the duplication and redundancy of radio waves, so it is obviously not a software patent. Basically the patent covers the way modern WiFi works, in that instead of serial (just one radio wave with error correction), parallel and redundant streams are sent, which allows you to have much greater bandwidth without losing the reliability. (And yes, that source again)
but because the name is too close to CISRO that it would confuse a jury
... looks like a jury wouldn't be the only one confused.
- Chuq
Cisco aren't on the list because they already have a licence for the tech for which they pay royalties.
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Can someone please justify why we should consider the CSIRO to be a patent troll? They are an actual research organisation (a taxpayer-funded one at that); they don't exist just to file patents and make claims on them. Why are people dismissing them as trolls?
Because it's slashdot. You would be lucky for the majority of posters to read the the summary let alone any background info. Congratulations to the CSIRO for their success on this - in spite of having their funding savaged. Though the technology was patented in 96 so the r+d was possibly done before it became a target of budget cuts.
From TFA:
HP, Apple, Intel, Dell, Microsoft and Netgear bringing cases against CSIRO in an attempt to have the research organisation's patent invalidated.
Does anyone else think these companies are the real trolls?
ah, so I should be sending CSIRO the medical bills for my wifi allergy shots!
Er, according to this article:
What "savaging" are you talking about?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
So how do research organisations exist, if not by licensing their research outcomes?
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
They are nothing alike. PARC is a private, corporate research lab. CSIRO is a public, government funded organization.
I'm not so sure. It's not my area, but this patent sounds like it might be an engineering solution, a simple application of known techniques, instead of an invention. The fact that a standards body decided to use this technology (either not knowing about the patent or deliberately ignoring it) also suggests that this is not actually a new technology.
Can you explain what you think is novel and unobvious about this technology?
This details precisely what CSIRO is supposed to do. Note that 8a refers to Australia rather a lot.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
From my cursory reading, it appears that the technology was independently rediscovered. As far as I know, this isn't a defence in patent cases (except if you discovered it first but didn't publish), but IMHO that should be changed. If you actually gain from using a patent it makes at least some sense that you should pay, but if you independently develop something without knowing about the previous patent, you're just being punished for not being lucky.
I can see plenty of problems with changing this, but I doubt it can make patent cases all that much more complicated.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
The government announced that CSIRO's funding allocation for next year will be reduced by a one-off amount of $200 million.
The savings will be used to fund a series of very large plaques in school gyms where, by pure coincidence, most polling booths are set up during federal elections.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
I think Australians would be perfectly happy that an Australian government research organisation funded by their taxes was also making additional income licensing their technologies to overseas and multi-national companies.
I know I am.
Advanced users are users too!
CSIRO exists because it's publicly funded. It's publicly funded because it's supposed to benefit the public and create research results usable by everybody.
It's publicly funded, yes, but by the people of Australia,, not of the people of other nations. In that sense CSIRO are absolutely entitled to obtain license fees from international companies. I'd also argue that they are entitled to collect fees from Australian companies since that should then allow them to decrease their funding from Australian tax payers.
Interesting viewpoint. How much does Oz contribute to DARPA for the use of internet?
Or to England for Penicillin?
According to the wonderful BBC documentary, "Breaking the Mould",, Florey, the Australian heading the team, was completely against patenting the technology needed to produce it in sufficient quantities, even though one of his colleagues insisted he should.
Because it was needed during the war, it was shown to a US pharmaceutical(?) company who did patent the process, which meant that the original inventors would have to pay for their own invention.
If the taxpayer funds the research, the taxpayer owns the results. Nobody should be able to patent something that came about because of taxpayer-funded research.
Furthermore, patented technology shouldn't be allowed to make it into "standards." "Standards" should be open and unencumbered. It's fundamentally anti-competitive to standardize on encumbered technology.
I'm not for letting patents mess around with science and technology, but they do have their place. A lot of members of Internet communities seem to damn patents and copyrighting because it is so harmful to software engineering. And yes, I DO think that copyrighting and closed-source development have no place in software engineering, because keeping that kind of work hushed up does not benefit the science. But as an Australian studying both physics and software engineering I feel that there is a big difference between propriety software that has everyone on the Internet outraged and the licensing of technology. I feel that the CSIRO are an organisation that Australia can be proud of and some of their research will benefit human kind long after any patents have expired. If I end up working for the CSIRO I would want my work to be licensed. Not for the money or because it would be my "right", but because it would help with the continuation of excellent scientific research in Australia and Earth as a whole. If, however, I end up working as a programmer, I would rather give my code away and go hungry than have it all hushed up for the sake of a money hungry corporation, because transparency in software is beneficial to the science. That is not to say that software shouldn't be licensable or sellable, just that it should be visible - as the CSIRO's technologies often are. So before you all start squabbling over who should pay an extra five bucks for a wiFi card, think about what you're buying for the future. Outrage over copyrighting that stunts progress is fair, outrage over investing a few dollars into the advancement of technology is petty.
I thought that WiFi technology was in use outside Australia. I had no idea we were so far ahead of the pack.
Is 1563649 a prime number?